hat dark and irregular street, mount
the steps of the old archiepiscopal palace, and enter the first and
largest of its apartments.

This was a very long salon, lighted by a series of high lancet windows,
of which the upper part only retained the blue, yellow, and red panes
that shed a mysterious light through the apartment. A large round table
occupied its entire breadth, near the great fireplace; around this
table, covered with a colored cloth and scattered with papers and
portfolios, were seated, bending over their pens, eight secretaries
copying letters which were handed to them from a smaller table. Other
men quietly arranged the completed papers in the shelves of a bookcase,
partly filled with books bound in black.

Notwithstanding the number of persons assembled in the room, one might
have heard the movements of the wings of a fly. The only interruption
to the silence was the sound of pens rapidly gliding over paper, and a
shrill voice dictating, stopping every now and then to cough. This
voice proceeded from a great armchair placed beside the fire, which was
blazing, notwithstanding the heat of the season and of the country. It
was one of those armchairs that you still see in old castles, and which
seem made to read one's self to sleep in, so easy is every part of it.
The sitter sinks into a circular cushion of down; if the head leans
back, the cheeks rest upon pillows covered with silk, and the seat
juts out so far beyond the elbows that one may believe the provident
upholsterers of our forefathers sought to provide that the book should
make no noise in falling so as to awaken the sleeper.

But we will quit this digression, and speak of the man who occupied
the chair, and who was very far from sleeping. He had a broad forehead,
bordered with thin white hair, large, mild eyes, a wan face, to which
a small, pointed, white beard gave that air of subtlety and finesse
noticeable in all the portraits of the period of Louis XIII. His mouth
was almost without lips, which Lavater deems an indubitable sign of an
evil mind, and it was framed in a pair of slight gray moustaches and a
'royale'--an ornament then in fashion, which somewhat resembled a comma
in form. The old man wore a close red cap, a large 'robe-dechambre', and
purple silk stockings; he was no less a personage than Armand Duplessis,
Cardinal de Richelieu.

Near him, around the small table, sat four youths from fifteen to twenty
years of age; these were p